Wooden Railway Train Table

December 2006

Like most 2-year old boys my son is fascinated with trains. At this time he was particularly fond of those Wooden Railway / Thomas the Tank Engine trains. Big surprise right?!

He was pretty happy playing with those trains on the floor or even on the coffee table. But I saw in the stores those train tables which looked like a really good idea. However I didn't just want to buy one of them because frankly most of them look pretty cheap and poorly made. There was no way they would hold up to a little-boys continuous torture.

So I decided to make my own. The overall table stands about 18" high, 4' wide and about 30" deep. This gives plenty of room to make an interesting layout of the wooden railway track. I was able to put in a round house, bridges and some inclines to make it interesting. The top was made out of 1/4" hardboard painted solid green. It proved to be a great surface for gluing down the tracks. Later I decided to make another top (replacing the green one) so that he could make his own layouts. Overall the table turnout incredibly sturdy. I can stand on it and this thing wont budge.

At the end, as a final touch I added a small brass plate with an inscription for my son.